It is known to treat water and other liquids with magnets to purify the water, reduce hardness, reduce scaling, and improve the taste of water based beverages. Water is a polymer in an (—H—O—H—O—H—O—) of an n-dimensional structure. There is a continuous hydrogen bonding to form this structure. This hydrogen bonding produces a sufficient chain length to create a liquid from this string of hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Since water has a polar structure due to the hydrogen bonding it will be susceptible to be affected by an applied magnetism. The positive/negative structure of the water molecules will be affected by the north/south fields of magnets.
Water is paramagnetic. Paramagnetism occurs primarily in substances in which some or all of the individual atoms, ions, or molecules possess a permanent magnetic dipole moment. The magnetization of such matter depends on the ratio of the magnetic energy of the individual dipoles to the thermal energy. Water has a dipole moment.
Ground water contains thousands of particles and microelements whose impurities give rise to the surrounding electron shells: cations (+), anions (−). “Pure” water is a polar liquid, i.e. part of the water molecule has a positive and part of it has a negative, electrical charge, but overall the net electrical charge is negative. Thus, the water molecule being a small magnet (dipole), one may effect its magnetic (or electric) field by causing the molecule to turn or rotate in one direction or the other, taking on a positive or negative higher potential, depending, whether the S (South, positive) or N (negative) outside magnetic field had been applied.
Water, being dipolar, can be partly aligned by an electric field and this may be easily shown by the movement of a stream of water by an electrostatic source. Even partial alignment of the water molecules with the electric field will cause pre-existing hydrogen bonding to become bent or broken. The balance between hydrogen bonding and van der Waals attractions is thus biased towards van der Waals attractions giving rise to less cyclic hydrogen bonded clustering.
Magnets affect the bonding angle between the hydrogen and the oxygen atom in the water molecule. Magnetized water causes the hydrogen-oxygen bond angle within the water molecule to be reduced from 104 to 103 degrees. This in turn causes the water molecule to cluster together in groups of 6-7 rather than 10-12. The smaller cluster leads to better absorption of water across cell walls.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,888,113 there is described a device that can be clamped onto a pipe for the treatment of water passing through the pipes. An objective is to reduce the amount of scaling of the pipes by the minerals dissolved in the water. U.S. Pat. No. 5,573,664 disposes magnets in a shower head to treat the shower water. The water can be treated to enhance the cleaning and treatment of the skin. U.S. Pat. No. 5,113,751 involves the treatment of coffee beverage water. The treated water and/or coffee enhances the flavor of the coffee. These are some of the uses of magnetism to enhance the use of water. It makes the water more useful and more palatable. It further makes the water more bio-available in that it can be absorbed faster by body tissue.
The present invention is directed to the treatment of water containers with magnets to enhance the utility of the water. The water will be more bio-available when directly ingested and will enhance the flavor of a beverage when used to produce a beverage. The water will be more effectively used by a person's body. The advantage of the present magnetic units is that they can be fitted to a wide range of container shapes and sizes. In addition the magnets can be arranged in various arrays around a container. In this way there is a maximum of versatility. The treatment of the water can be customized to the shape and size of the container and the needs of an individual. As used herein the term container includes any structure for holding static or flowing water. This can be a tank, jug, bottle, carafe, pitcher, pipe, filter unit and any other structure for containing static or flowing water. Further as used herein the term water includes viscous substances which contain water such as gels, lotions, mixtures, suspensions and other liquid/solid and liquid/liquid combinations.